ABSTRACT
In this chapter I shall explore the role of courts in shaping the legal framework of relations between employers and individual workers in post-Soviet Russia, with particular attention to the interplay between different levels and branches of the judiciary. The primary focus will be on controversial points of law relating to the conclusion and termination of labour contracts, especially unfair dismissals (in Russian terminology, ‘dissolution of a labour contract without legal grounds’), for such cases create the largest number of disputes in regular courts of all instances and some eventually give rise to proceedings in the Constitutional Court. In Russia, labour disputes concerning dismissals hinge on the question whether there was a ‘legal grounds’ for it (or a ‘just cause’, in British legal parlance) and having a job position is conceptualised as a right. It makes them very similar to British practices and unlike those of the United States where the predominant issue is discrimination and employers have broad latitude in hiring and firing so long as their decisions are non-discriminatory.1
